We ride over to the battlefield in the morning. Twenty years have passed since the Indians caught us on Cutknife Hill, but the grassy slope is still strewn with empty cartridge shells. An old Indian who took his share in the fray goes over the battlefield with us, exchanging reminiscences where once we exchanged hot shot, and “reconstructing” the scene by creeping up the slope with an imaginary gun in his hand. Then the enemies of a bygone day sit down and take pot-luck together—pot-luck being a couple of prairie chicken brought down with one shot.
To-day, it seems, the painted warriors of ’85 are a peaceful community of farmers. Here comes one, driving by in his wagon with a good team of horses. Instead of picturesque blanket and bead-work, he wears what we have the conceit to call civilized clothes, and differs only in complexion from his European neighbors. On the edge of a poplar bluff we meet another Cree brave, who comes forward smiling to have his photograph taken when he has put up his horses in their log stable. His summer dwelling stands close by,—a genuine tepee, but made of canvas instead of buffalo skin—and in front of the door is a wash-tub. Think of it!
Still more remarkable than the wash-tub is the big threshing machine. A little later, and it will be hard at work pouring golden wheat into wagon after wagon. The whole outfit, steam engine and all, was bought by the tribe with their own earnings. The land is still [a]Wouldn’t Live Without Trees] held in common, but any tribesman who wants to fence off part of it as a farm is free to do so.
Through the park lands of the Battle River Valley we now ride for many hours—a country as rich as the prairie, and rich not only in soil, but in wood and water. High on the bank of a clear and rapid stream, in the shade of a beautiful grove, an old Ontario farmer and his sons, with an eye to the picturesque as well as the profitable, have built their mansion. Between them, they have taken a whole section, 640 acres, and have over 150 acres broken this first year.
“A grand country,” says the farmer’s wife, bringing out a jug of cool milk for the riders when their broncos have drunk their fill at the creek. “It’s as beautiful as where we came from, and that’s saying a lot. My husband and I wouldn’t live without trees. There was a man driving through to-day that said he wouldn’t live with them—says he feels choked in the brush. He’s taken a homestead where you can plow the whole half-mile furrow straight without a turn. Well, it takes all sorts to make a world.”
CHAPTER XII
Learning to be Canadians
OUT ON the prairie again we ride, by the old freighting trail from Battleford to Saskatoon. But we only meet one freighting outfit all the way, a wagon drawn by two plodding oxen. “It was a big business, that freighting,” says a Scottish blacksmith who has built his shack and smithy beside the trail, “but it didn’t last long. The freighters made good money from the time settlers began to come in thick, but now the railway is open the trail is dead.” He might have said “barred and buried,” for it is not a surveyed road, and again and again we find ourselves charging into a wire fence and have to turn aside and make the circuit of some new farm.
He is a townsman, this swarthy smith; he has about as little farm experience as cash; but he is the sort of man that makes a successful farmer all the same. He is rich in brain and in brawn. From the mating of these, all wealth and welfare spring. The blacksmith put in a few acres of oats and potatoes last year, in the intervals of shoeing freighters’ teams, and then went off to work at his trade all winter in a lumber camp north of the Saskatchewan; this winter he will do the same—“and when I come back to the farm with a bit of money I’ll make things hum, as the Yankees say.”
The wife smiles, rocking her little girl to sleep. “Do you never wish yourself back in Scotland?” I ask, [a]Scandinavians from the States] thinking of her winters spent alone with her infants in the prairie shack. “Never!” says she. “We’re all so much better in health out here, and going to be better off too, in good time. Look at this lassie. She was always ailing, over there, and now she’s nearly as strong as the rest.”
There’s no such medicine in all the drug stores as the life-giving air of the West.